WWII: Cabbage patch army beat the rationing blues during wartime

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Eric Swales, of Nevinson Avenue, Sunnyhill, was a slip of a lad during the Second World War but he has retained incredible memories of those days of hardship on the Home Front. Here he recalls the Dig For Victory and Make Do And Mend days when nothing ever went to waste.

WHILE the Government battles obesity and pleads with us all to eat more fruit and vegetables, the war years were the stuff of dreams for dieticians as cabbages adorned dinner plates the length and breadth of the country.

Aside from the fact that rationing meant food was at a premium, we were all encouraged to join The Dig For Victory campaign. This succeeded in getting people to grow as many different vegetables as possible.

Allotments came into their own along with back gardens, famous gardens, public parks, golf and tennis clubs, railway embankments and any available open spaces.

I believe I have even seen a photograph of the moat at the Tower of London drained and turned over to cabbages.

Something called the “Utility Scheme” also came into force. This benefited ordinary people by allowing them to buy new items that were affordable and functional but of limited design and availability. These were identified by a special label. With timber and wood pulp unavailable from Scandinavia, furniture became one of the first things affected by this scheme and also the points system.

Clothing was another and also came under the points system. People were allowed 66 points per year, reducing to 36, each garment being allocated a certain number of points. Second-hand clothes were bought or swapped and “hand-me-downs” became the fashion. Pity the poor young lad who was the youngest with a family of sisters.

“Make Do And Mend” was a popular slogan. I learned how to darn socks with a “mushroom”, knit scarves of ever-increasing length and to sew on buttons. Jackets and long-sleeved jumpers had to be patched at the elbows and, by the end of the war, these had become a style adopted with new clothing.

With the shortage of wood pulp and paper, newspapers were reduced in size and some children’s comics went out of circulation.

However, one of the worst results of this was the almost complete lack of toilet paper, the solution being newspaper torn into small squares and hung outside lavatory door.

We were fortunate. Our lavatory was attached to the house, not down the bottom of the garden or across a square open area, where there was no privacy in the “privy”.

Salvage drives for paper became popular, not unlike today, but for entirely different reasons.

I took newspapers to school where they were weighed and, dependent on reaching specified weights, I would be given a circular card badge of differing colours carrying a military rank. I can only remember receiving a blue one for lieutenant.

Many other things were salvaged, metal being the most obvious, with iron railings from people’s front gardens and those off the walls round the school playgrounds being cut down. I cannot remember if the school gates went as well or whether they were left for partial security.

Each week the dust cart came round to empty the dustbins and towed a green coloured, two-wheeled van, something akin to a horse box, for collecting paper and cardboard separately from other household waste.

Trying to find an alternative to sweets was a desperate task for me. Firstly, getting the cheapest, which saved a few pennies; then going for the ones that lasted longest – Rowntrees Fruit Gums, those that were shaped like fruit, were my favourites.

There was a herbalist shop on Pear Tree Road, Derby. It was very dismal inside with a high counter my pals and I could just see over. Here, we could get small sticks of hard black liquorice, actually a laxative, so no problems about being regular.

There was “Spanish Root” which looked like wooden twigs that were yellow inside. I think it also had some connection with liquorice. We would chew this until it was a shredded mess and we were left with yellow stains around our mouths and fingers.

Locust beans were another thing, though they were not very pleasant tasting or looking. Horlicks and Ovaltine tablets could also be had.

We would buy Oxo cubes from the corner shop and sit on the doorstep nibbling away at them. Any Oxo left, we would turn into a drink by adding hot water.

The taste of chocolate changed when they stopped making it with whole milk. If a tin of condensed milk, which was used as both milk and a sweetener, had been opened, I could not resist dipping my finger in it at every opportunity. Toffee apples and carrots became a novelty.

When American soldiers began to arrive they were often a soft touch for chewing gum –“Got any gum, chum? – sweets, chocolate and biscuits.

White bread disappeared when the supply of grain from America dried up and the “National Loaf”, made of wholemeal, replaced it. This resulted in a dirty, grey-coloured, coarse textured bread. Although not well liked, it may have been healthier.

Bread, though controlled, was not on ration until after the war. My mam used to send me to the corner shop for a loaf. On my way back I would eat all the crust off the corners and when I returned home my mam would say, “Take it back, the mice have been at it”.

I would go into the entry, wait for a while, come back and tell her they had not got any left and then eventually explain it was me which, of course, she had known all along. That lucky mouse continued his merry way for many years.

Fruit from abroad was nigh impossible to get, though a few oranges and bananas managed to creep in.

Only the fruits grown in Britain were available when in season. Soft fruit was preserved as jam for which extra sugar was allowed. My mam used to bottle plums and tomatoes in jars and salt down runner beans. Many vegetables and fruits could be dried – carrots, parsnips, celery, peas, apples, apricots, pears and plums.

Locally, there were two apple trees where, in season, we would go scrumping (pinching apples). Out of season, if I or any of my pals had an apple, we were pleaded with to “save us the cog” (core) which would end up nibbled right down to the pips.

Fish was not rationed, but it was scarce. All the bigger and more modern fishing boats were taken over by the Royal Navy as warships. The boats that remained were sitting ducks for the Germans.

If I was sent to the fishmongers, I always took some newspaper with me in case the shop had run out of wrapping paper (no plastic bags, then). It was not unknown for women to go home carrying fish by the tail. Strange fish such as snoek, along with whale meat, began to appear on the fishmonger’s slab.

When I went to a local fish and chip shop and it was busy with long queues, Mr Potter, who ran the shop with his wife, would sometimes let me help him turn the freshly peeled potatoes into chips. When my turn came to get my order of chips he would top them up with bits of fried batter which were skimmed off the top of the fish frier.

Everyday things such as crockery, glassware and in fact anything you care to mention, disappeared completely as stocks ran out. Soap became a very serious problem as it was reduced from 3oz (90g) to 2oz (60g) per month. Just recently, out of curiosity and for comparison, I looked at an average tablet of toilet soap, which weighed in at 125g, so it appears we had to manage on less than half of that for a month.

There was no leaving the soap lying about in the water.

At home, when dinner time came round and it was something I didn’t recognise, my mam would not tell me what it was until after I had eaten it.

If I liked it, all well and good. If I didn’t it was hard luck. With any scraps that were left a decision had to be made – could they go into a forthcoming stew or soup thickened with oatmeal or were they destined for the pig swill bin at the end of the street?

Decorating our house involved painting over the wall paper (there was none available for replacement) with distemper, a sort of poor man’s emulsion, usually buff coloured. Trying to add a bit of variety, a sponge dipped into a dye, then stippled on to the wall to make a pattern would hopefully do the trick. Paint was of a utility version of about three colours – cream, green and brown.

The use of gas, electricity and water had to be curtailed. Coal was limited to 4cwt per month. When a delivery had been dropped down into our cellar it was separated into large lumps, cobbles and slack. We also had bricquettes, which were compressed blocks of coal dust. On occasion, me and my pals, together with a battered old pram, would collect coke from the gas works on Deadman’s Lane.

All my pals seemed to have their dads at home, presumably because they worked at engineering factories, the railways, hospitals, or other reserved occupations.

My dad, however, was in the Army. Between the time he left Dunkirk and D-Day, when he returned to France, he was stationed in Britain so I saw him from time to time when he came home on leave.

It seemed to me that even my dad was scarce and on ration.

Two cartoon caricatures of the time that I remember were the Squanderbug, a fat ugly type of beetle covered in Swastikas always trying to get people to spend on needless things instead of saving.

The other more humorous cartoon was “Chad”, depicted as a large domed head with big eyes and a long nose hanging down looking over a wall with fingers grasping the top, with the slogan “Wot, no bananas?” chalked on the wall.

If the slogan was verbal, the answer would be “Don’t you know there’s a war on?”

How my mam managed to look after us, shop, queue, clean, care for six soldiers and three ATS girls who were billeted with us at varying times, work in a munitions factory and cope with my baby sister, who was born a few weeks after D-Day, in those times of severe austerity, I will never know.

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This article is from the Derby Evening Telegraph and is reproduced online here.